Explorations

Back to Reality

I'm one of those people who feel the new year really starts in September. Summer is playtime, and my focus is on getting out and having fun. Even when I'm working, I'm keeping one eye on the beautiful weather outside and scheming to get out there as soon as possible. I plan my summer schedule around camping, concerts and the beach.

But, when the weather starts getting colder and the kids go back to school, I'm usually ready to settle back into my "normal" life. I spend my days working and my evenings taking my son to soccer practice and squeezing in our myriad of activities. We live a full, hectic life, my son and I, and I normally love it.

This year, though, I'm feeling very different about the whole "back to work" thing. First of all, I haven't been working. I was laid off on June 15th, so I decided to take the entire summer off and spend it with my 11-year-old son. I did that, and we had a blast, spending more time together than we had been able to since he was little. I was also able to do more creative things, including pottery and writing. Time to play seems to be the ultimate luxury in our lives, and I've had a lot of it lately.

So now, the fall has come. My son has gone back to school, and I've gone past the date when I was planning to start a serious job search. Still, I'm not feeling much urgency about the matter. My creativity is really flowing, and I'm coming up with more and more projects for myself. The ability to think without pressure and to experiment without urgency has my normally fertile brain working overtime. It's intoxicating! How can I interrupt that flow to concentrate on the boring matters of paying the rent and taking care of the bills?

If the fun I've been having isn't enough incentive to postpone the job search, the tight job market is also a good excuse. Many of the people who were laid off when I was are still not working, despite their best efforts and hard work. These are talented and creative people, with good, marketable high tech skills. It's not hard to see that I, who was playing rather than being stressed, made a wise choice (or so I tell myself).

So now what? I am, after all, a single parent, and finances are going to eventually force me to find some way to support us. I'm not dating anyone, so I'm not likely to marry a rich man in the near future, and winning the lottery is even more difficult when you never buy the tickets. So it seems I'm going to have to get out there and make some money.

But how? I've read the career advice book that says I'm supposed to take an inventory of my skills and see where they might fit. The person who wrote that bit of advice does not know me, because my skills and interests are all over the place. My degree is in Math, and my teaching certificate was for Math and Physics. In addition, my last job was programming. All of this leads in an analytical direction. To complicate matters, I love creative writing, and I hope to eventually support myself as a writer. I also love pottery, making jewelry and doing almost anything else creative. What else? I'm the kind of person who volunteers for things, who gets involved and wants to change things for the better. I'd love to have work where I'm feeding the hungry or helping the homeless or victims of domestic violence. And I love babies—absolutely adore them. And dogs.

I read somewhere that people who own a business often own three businesses, and I think that's where I need to be, with at least three different things to do. In one of my jobs/businesses I need to work with people somehow, bettering their lives and their situations, to satisfy the teacher/social activist part of my personality. One of them needs to be writing. One of them needs to be something else creative, like making jewelry. And somewhere in there, I need to use my problem-solving skills and my analytical abilities, which are an important part of me, too. And maybe squeeze in a few hours here and there at a daycare, holding the babies. I realize, of course, that not all of these need to be paying jobs, but, somehow, at least some of them need to be!

This may be why I'm having a hard time finding just the right ad in the papers. I've read quite a few, but I haven't yet seen the perfect combination of the above. In fact, I'm kind of thinking that I'd better not show this to any potential employers, because I'm not sounding like the kind of person who's going to be a stable, reliable employee (although I really am).

So, this is where autumn finds me: undecided and having a great time. I'll be settling down soon, but I have no idea when or where.

Dolores has been many things, including a waitress, a factory worker, a math & physics teacher, a mother and a programmer of children's computer games. She is currently deciding on the direction of her next set of challenges.